The Lion Voltron series finally gets an official DVD release. In order to create an acceptable product, Anime Works had to take some rather unusual steps. Since Voltron was cobbled together from two different series, Anime Works got the rights to both GoLion and Dairugger, restored them both, and re-edited them together into Voltron.

The episodes look great, better than I've ever seen.

Voltron doesn't quite hold up to my memories but, after the first few horrendous episodes, it gets down to business and is pretty good.

Some highlights include the episodes "The Princess Joins Up", which features a great battle between Voltron and a cyclops monster, "Bad Birthday" which features scenes of forced cannibalism and TWO monsters that just come out of nowhere at the end, and "Yurak Gets His Pink Slip", in which Prince Lotor is debuted and previous head-villain Yurak gets to go out fighting.

I had only seen random episodes before and was suprised to find that, when viewed in sequence, there is a loose continuity (or at least chronology) at work. The rough, '80s anime style is refreshing in these days of overly-slick, overly-stylized crap.

The only real impediment to my complete enjoyment is that Voltron is basically an "idiot picture". For the plot to advance, characters usually have to do the stupidest thing possible at any given moment. For example, in one episode, Princess Allura takes the black lion out for a solo training run without permission and almost ends up getting everybody killed. That's bad enough but, later, to make up for it, she decides that she must surrender herself to Lotor. (!!!!!!!!) I hope, I really hope, that in GoLion she was actually going to kill Lotor to redeem herself.

Also, Voltron's battles are sometimes rather perfunctory. A robeast will show up, Voltron will form, pull out his blazing sword, and CHOP, all within 45 seconds or so. You can really tell the animators were thinking, "Yeah, better drop a robeast in here, I guess."

I wondered how my memories of Voltron would stand up. Even working with memories that were years old, I thought that most of the episodes followed nearly the same thread with ultimate resolution (Voltron chopping up the last big monster). The reason I thought of it is that I have been watching my way through the Ultraman first series DVD set. They do much the same thing, with Ultraman finally zapping the last monster in every episode.